Impromptu Dinner

Featured Pro: Sam Talbot
Category: Cooking
Time: 6:05


SAM TALBOT: I just love being outdoors. It’s where my life happens. It’s where I find my inspiration. But most importantly, it’s where I have fun.

Now, with that being said, when a lot of people want to be outside, they want to eat outside. It’s mostly for a picnic or a barbecue. I’m not really into that. I’m more shooting from the hip, an impromptu dinner, more of just a grab-and-go type thing. I have a fantastic dish I’m going to show you how to make - Korean short ribs. They cook amazingly. They’re fork-tender. The flavor is to die for – soy sauce, agave, chili pepper, all right in the sauce.

Now, the best part about it is when you’re cooking something that you’re going to take for later, you want to make sure it travels well. These Korean short ribs are a great dish that you can make and then take to your impromptu meal on the go.

All right, so let’s get started. Right now I’m browning off the rest of my short ribs. You see these four sitting here? All we do is we get a nice iron pot here, brown them on all four sides. You can see that golden brown right along the side, those nice burnt ends. That’s what we’re looking for.

All right, so while my short ribs are browning, we’re going to make our sauce. We’re going to get our bowl right here. We’re going to start off with a little bit of low-sodium soy sauce. We’re going to take a little bit of agave, some chili sauce, a little bit of chili paste, sambal, sriracha. Anything will really work; a little bit of sesame oil and some rice wine vinegar. Give this a whisk.

Now we’re going to pull our short ribs out of there, a nice GBD – golden brown and delicious. You see that nice beautiful crust on there, glistening.

All right, so we have a little bit of the fat rendered over from the short ribs, a little bit of extra olive oil in there. So now we’re going to saute our aromatics. First, our diced yellow onion, ginger, two garlic cloves smashed and chopped; give this a quick stir; our scallion. Now we’re just going to saute these a little bit. You can see those nice brown bits forming in the pan from the leftover caramelization from the onions and the ginger and the garlic. And we’re going to start to make our rue. We’re going to deglaze, actually, with our sauce when our ribs go back in the pan.

We have two tablespoons of rice flour to help as our thickening agent, to thicken the soy sauce. We’re going to dump that right in there. Now we’re making a basic rue. So we’re going to brown our flour a little bit, keep working it. Once you have your flour incorporated, the onions, you don’t really see any white spots, there’s no clumps or anything, then you’re good to go and you can add your soy sauce.

So now the fat’s deglazing. We’re going to take our wooden spoon and we’re going to scrape all those brown bits and get that right back into the sauce; turn down our heat a little bit. Oh, my God, this aroma that’s coming off here is just amazing.

All right, now we’re going to add our short ribs back into that sauce. We’ll throw these guys in there. You kind of don’t want to overcrowd it. You just work around, fill up the edges. And another great trick is you want to make sure, if your short ribs – if you’re braising with the bone, I like to put the meat side down in the sauce because that’s where all the flavor’s going to seep into.

Last one – perfect. Now we’re going to top this with three cups of water. All right, so our short ribs are in the pot. Our soy sauce is in there; all of our aromatics. We’re going to top it off. Our oven has been preheated to 325 and we’re going to go in there for about two to two and a half hours.

Check those out. I mean, you can barely even grab them, they’re so tender, so amazing; literally just falling right off the bone. And I’m going to show you some of the best ways to possibly eat these guys. Lettuce helps – great alternative to a taco shell. You can just take your short ribs, put it in a bowl, pull it with your fingers, and just fill one of these guys up.

Kimchi – we all know I’m a kimchi freak. I love it all the time. I would eat it all day long if I could. The short rib mixed up with a little kimchi – amazing. We also have some wonderful rice vermicelli noodles, and of course a little bit of scallion. So now you can really see the versatility of this dish. You have your lettuce, your kimchi, your rice vermicelli.

It’s economical. Short ribs are really easy on the wallet. It’s kind of a one-pot wonder. You make it, you take it, and then you’re on your way to your impromptu dinner. As a matter of fact, I’m actually going to pack these guys up right now, call my friend Crystal and see if she wants to head off to an impromptu dinner outside; go al fresco dining.

Spoon some more sauce over here. We are out the door.

CRYSTAL: Hello?

SAM: Hey, Crystal, it’s Sam. How are you?

CRYSTAL: Hey, Sam. How are you?

SAM: Good. What’s going on?

CRYSTAL: Nothing much.

SAM: So I was thinking, instead of coming over with dinner, we could either meet at the Brooklyn Bridge or Mikey’s Terrace if you want.

CRYSTAL: Oh, that sounds adventurous. How about the Brooklyn Bridge?

SAM: Sounds great. I’ll see you there, maybe like 15 minutes?

CRYSTAL: Okay. Can I bring anything?

SAM: No, I’m good. Thank you.

CRYSTAL: Awesome. See you there.

SAM: Okay, bye bye.

CRYSTAL: Bye.